WRIGHTSTOWN (NBC 26) — Students at Wrightstown High School have seen AI's reputation change over the last year.
"At first teachers said do not use it at all because mainly students were just using it to write for them, But then once teachers started teaching students how to use it to help instead of just do it for them, then it was viewed as a good thing," said Wrightstown senior Zach Wendlandt.
Teachers at Wrightstown have begun to show students how to use AI to help their work rather than be their work which, in turn, has helped them recognize AI when it's present.
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"I feel like it can be obvious when students just use it to get answers versus make their work better so I think teachers especially have gotten better at realizing when it was used in the wrong way," said Wrightstown senior Ella Verbeten.
AI education is still in its early stages, but the school district isn't shying away from that.
"It's something that you can't be afraid of," said Sarah Nelson. She is the district's Director of Teaching and Learning.
Nelson oversees the curriculum for the entire district in this newly created role. She says omitting AI from students' education could do more harm than good.
"If it's something that you're not going to talk about, they're going to use it however they want. But if it's something we can educate them on, then we kind of hold that narrative," said Nelson.
"This is a tool. It doesn't replace your critical thinking; it doesn't replace your own thinking, and it's only as good as you're going to have it be. What are the prompts that you're giving it?"
To this point, there hasn't been much formal instruction from the district for teachers to bring AI into the classroom, but that will soon change.
The district has a pair of upcoming faculty professional development days largely focused on AI, and teachers at Wrightstown have already begun to implement AI in their lessons.
"A lot of it is just teacher driven. We haven't given them a ton of direction as of yet. We've opened up [Google] Gemini for our 8th - 12th graders that that's a tool that they can use," said Nelson. "We've also given the teachers... just come and ask and we'll help you navigate some of these unknowns. We've started it, but we really look to expand on it in the upcoming two professional developments that we have."
The school district believes embracing the future rather than avoiding it will improve AI education for both students and teachers.
"It's the same thing when the internet first came out. Not everybody thought that this was going to be something they were going to use. Inevitably you use it," said Nelson.
"This is our starting point, and then every year we're going to continue to evolve with AI because it's just going to continue to change."
